Human Trafficking and Prostitution: Here’s a Better Way to Confront Them

No matter what, when it comes to addressing the world’s oldest profession, there’s always going to be a demand for prostitutes willing to sell their bodies for a fee. Like illicit drug use, until it becomes legal, prostitution will continue unabated, unregulated, uncontrolled and untaxed.

Also, when it comes to the sex trade, there always will be occasional, much publicized sweeps of prostitutes and johns in some seedy section of a city. There always will be some righteous state legislators, too, introducing virtuous bills targeting some aspect of this socially unacceptable behavior.

Some examples: Last week, Florida’s Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who has been described as not “just a local enforcer of laws but a more universal arbiter of morals,” announced that a four-day prostitution sting had netted 78 arrests that included porn stars. He got bonus nationwide exposure for the effort. Judd said, “We seemed to have every thug and reprobate in central Florida under arrest… Let the word go forward, this is not our last operation, because we like it.”

Like it? You can bet Judd loves it. Those morality raids are time tested, very effective political “tricks” for politicians, particularly sheriffs and prosecutors, to remind the public how well they are protecting the community from morally depravity.